Affiliated Organizations

An engineering professor wanted to test out his design for a better concrete fastener. An entrepreneur had an idea for a new product that she wanted to present to investors. A team came up with a concept for a device that would make the use of a router — a tool used for carving grooves in wood — cleaner and more efficient.

Ilya Avdeev has been named director of innovation at the new Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. In this role, Avdeev — an associate professor of mechanical engineering who has been instrumental in fostering entrepreneurship at UWM — will lead program development and partnership cultivation.

UWM has become an academic partner in a National Science Foundation research center that’s developing improvements in how Americans will access energy in the near future. It could even lead to lower energy bills.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s (UWM) Lubar Entrepreneurship Center and the Shorewood School District have announced a new Teaching Fellows partnership to cultivate Authentic Learning in grades 7-12. The new Fellows program, supported by a grant from the Shorewood SEED Foundation, will tap into UWM’s expertise and provide professional development for Shorewood teachers as they build new and innovative educational opportunities for students.

On this week’s program, a discussion of the critical need for innovation and entrepreneurship in Milwaukee and the region. WUWM’s Dave Edwards talks with UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone; Julia Taylor, president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee; and Sheldon Lubar. Mr. Lubar and his family donated $10 million to UWM to establish the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone announced a $1.7 million gift from Rockwell Automation to support a new Connected Systems Institute at UWM. The institute will be the first of its kind in the state.

If you sense that something is stirring or hear a buzz, it might just be the sound of Milwaukee’s high-tech community building the foundation for a new entrepreneurial economy. In the past several years, an outcropping of high-tech entrepreneurs has emerged here, universities have gone all out to teach entrepreneurial skills, and established companies are on board to support this emerging startup ecosystem. But perceptions change slowly, as the underlying reality shifts.

The work of some UWM students is literally helping make people’s lives better. The students in UWM’s App Brewery worked with doctors at the Medical College of Wisconsin to develop an app that helps guide doctors during the delicate process of brain surgery. Incredibly, patients are awake during the surgery. The app, called NeuroMapper, is a tablet-based tool that aids surgeons who are removing a tumor or tissue by helping them test whether they are encroaching on tissue that would impair functions if removed.

Amid a shower of confetti and streamers, UWM Chancellor Mark Mone on Monday announced the goal of the university’s comprehensive fundraising campaign: $200 million. That’s double the goal of the last campaign, which concluded in 2008 with $125 million, $25 million more than its initial target.